June 19, 2001 - Role Reversal

"The blind leading the blind"

[Click on thumbnails to see full size pictures]

Macarena & Jim

Today Macarena is flying BG as she prepares for her checkride for her private balloon rating. She's already an instrument-rated airplane pilot (some people would say real pilot, but what do they know?!). She handles the controls for the entire flight.

Santo is chasing us today, and taking pictures. When he sees this picture, his comment is something like "The only thing missing from this picture is the seeing-eye dog," hence the subtitle above! [In case you're lost, this is a reference to the fact that Santo taught both of us to fly, and here we are taking off nominally as instructor and student!]

Practising landings

We have very light winds so we spend the first part of the flight doing practice landings in the park while Macarena gets the feel of BG which flies quite differently from Santo's almost new Aerostar 69 with it's much more powerful burner.

Off we go

After a while we head off toward the north at first, then northeast, ultimately to a drop-line landing.

The GPS tracks. Our track is in yellow. Santo has his GPS on in the chase vehicle, so I overlaid both tracks; his chase track is in white. You can see he was right with us, and usually a bit ahead, which is typically the best way to chase.